Matt Tierney

I am a second-year PhD student in the Computer Science department of the Courant Institute, New York University. My research in Systems and Networks focuses on how to make better systems for users. Better can be measured by traditional metrics -- speed, reliability, cost -- or user experience. And users can be systems administrators or people who just want to get things done with computers. I am figuring out how to do this thing called "systems research" under the guidance of Jinyang Li, Helen Nissenbaum, and Lakshminarayanan Subramanian.

I am a core member of the Networking and Wide-area Systems (NeWS) group and Systems Reading Group; I am also affiliated with the NYU Law Privacy Research Group (group blog). I assisted the organizational foundation of the NYU and NYU: Abu Dhabi Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED), in association with CATER: Cost-effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Regions. I received an Undergraduate Degree in Computer Science from Harvard University in 2009, where I worked with Rohan Murty, Ian Rose, and Matt Welsh on the CitySense project.

What do I like to do?
I am currently making my way back to the realms of traditional systems and networking research. (I spent a couple of years in the realm of Information and Communication Technology for Development, but, since I will be sticking around the States for a few years, I figure I should tackle challenges that I can encounter firsthand.) My research interests tend to be under the "networked systems" and "distributed systems" umbrellas, with an emphasis on end-user performance, wireless, storage, security, and privacy.